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INDUBIOUSCELEBRATION: Among the myriad of banes afflicting the existence of any reporter lucky enough to still have a job is that of the obligatory anniversary story. Any self-serving organization that’s managed to perpetuate its existence for at least five years feels endowed with the inalienable right to have a cover article written attesting to their amazing foresight and staggering magnanimity. Stop the presses! Fiesta turns 90 this year! Solstice turned 40! We’re all getting older. In this vein, I’d like to extend a loud shout-out to the good folks running Vices & Spices ​— ​who never asked ​— ​who just celebrated their 39th year selling some seriously fine Mocha Java. They’ve also demonstrated it’s possible to be hip and happening in a low-key Hawaiian sort-of way even when smothered in the opulent bosom of beautiful downtown San Ro-Kay. Likewise congrats to Hazard’s Cyclesport ​— ​who also didn’t ask ​— ​which has been selling and fixing bikes for 100 years.

Angry Poodle

With so many anniversaries to keep track of, I somehow forgot to send a card observing the 100th anniversary of the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, not be confused with the popular rock band that pimped his name in a fit of stoned-out irony that was no doubt quite hilarious if you happened to be there. The real FF, by all accounts, was a true killjoy, described by contemporaries as dark, strange, uninspiring, and someone who cast an aura of violence and recklessness. For fun, FF liked nothing better than to shoot wild animals by the hundreds of thousands ​— ​even kangaroos and lemurs ​— ​and accumulate trophies in similar number attesting to his appetite for gore and carnage. The deal was that FF stood next in line to run the Austro-Hungarian Empire ​— ​kind of like China, Exxon, and Fox News rolled into one ​— ​but that destiny would be denied when Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian 19-year-old hanging out with a group of proto-anarchist punks sporting the unimaginably unoriginal name the Black Hand, intervened. First, Gav chucked a bomb in FF’s general direction, prompting FF to stand up and object, “I come here to visit, and you throw bombs at me! This is outrageous.” Gav and crew rectified their lapse in manners by popping a cap in FF’s neck and one in the belly of his poor wife, Sophie. This set in motion what was known as “The Great War” or alternately “The War to End All Wars,” but which, in fact, was neither. Austria-Hungary ​— ​being disrespected ​— ​felt compelled to invade Serbia, thus pissing off Russia, and Germany sought to make lemonade by invading Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. When the dust settled five years later, nine million people had been slaughtered, another seven million maimed so bad they wished they’d been killed, and another 15 million merely scarred for life.

The United States, then at best a second-rate also-ran, shrewdly waited until almost everyone had already been killed, jumping only at the very last minute “to save the day.” Ever since, the world has been our proverbial oyster, over which we insist upon our exclusive right to shuck and jive as any Numero Uno would see fit. Out of all this sprang the still very contemporary genie of chemical warfare and weapons of mass destruction, not to mention of course, Ernest Hemingway, whose stripped-down minimalist literary distillation of the psychic trauma he endured as a battlefield medic has been foisted upon successive generations of high school students ever since. Americans, not being as dumb as we look, had to be led kicking and screaming into this war. From the ashes of the propaganda machine established by the White House to brainwash us into battle emerged what’s since become Madison Avenue and the whole attendant advertising industry that’s made a science of preying upon our worst insecurities to incite the expenditure of money not possessed on goods and services not needed.

Four of the great empires then running The Show were wiped out entirely. In Russia, the czar was tossed overboard, giving rise to the USSR, dubbed by sometime Santa Barbara resident Ronald Reagan “the Evil Empire,” and of course, the whole Cold War thing, which would in turn transform the bucolic bliss of the once agrarian Goleta Valley into a high-tech hot bed of smokeless industry totally and utterly dependent upon military research dollars. That lucrative arrangement crashed during the Peace Scare that broke out with the fall of the Berlin Wall, but it’s since been replaced by new waves of high-tech innovators who generate billions making devices I don’t pretend to fathom.

Making this more than a gratuitous stroll down Memory Lane is how the victors divided the spoils. With the fall of the Ottoman Empire, England and France got to redraw the map of the Middle East as they saw fit, creating ​— ​via what’s termed the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 ​— ​the boundary lines to new countries where none existed to optimize their access to cheap, plentiful, and uninterrupted oil. The only problem was that the people occupying these new countries included various tribal, ethnic, and religious rivals who lived pretty much to kill one another. No one in their right mind would ever create a country including Shia, Sunni, and Kurds, but that’s how Iraq got born, thanks to the Sykes-Picot Agreement. No one living there at the time was party to this agreement, and it should come as no surprise ​— ​though it always does ​— ​that the religious nut-jobs leading the latest insurrection in Iraq ​— ​ISIS ​— ​have explicitly vowed to erase the map lines drawn up by the Sykes-Picot deal, no matter how much blood has to be spilled in the process. And here we thought we managed to get out of Iraq after how many years of fighting? So now what?

Will someone tell Franz Ferdinand I’m sorry I forgot to write? And in the meantime, happy birthday to Vices & Spices, Hazard’s, and all ships at sea. If we’re lucky enough to make it to next year’s, we’ll really have something to celebrate.

Comments

Great article about W.W. I and anniversaries. However, Nick, despite your fun with Franz-Ferdinand's craze for killing animals (Teddy Roosevelt was just the same, it was de rigeur in those times), he was actually a serious reformer and planned to change things considerably in Austro-Hungarian Empire - here's just one of many sources on this: http://everything2.com/title/Archduke... . Further, we can see the same crazed imperial rivalries and ambitions today with Putin trying to get back some of the Russian Empire, China rising and taking over the South China Sea, and in our own imperialistic ambitions. Proof? We keep spying on the Germans WHO ARE OUR ALLIES! While Germany gets all the blame for W.W. I (and properly so for W.W. II), actually it was the nutty Russians under their Czar led around by Rasputin, shaky A-H Empire, the tottering Ottoman Empire, and the intransigence of the British and French Empires in not letting newly powerful Germany into the "Empire club". The USA joined the Empire club in 1898 when we grabbed Cuba, the Philippines, Wake, Guam, Puerto Rico and other stuff from Spain.

@DrDan, it was the Kaiser's guarantee of support for the AH empire's heavy handed ultimatum to Serbia that lit the fuse for WWI. The Ottomans came in months after the fighting had started on hopes of getting back land lost to Russia. The Germans were clearly responsible for the war. The utter destruction of Belgium and northern France were war crimes that shocked the world and we're never prosecuted.

I agree that the "blank check" from Kaiser to A-H Empire is considered crucial, but Czar Nicholas's confused support for Slavs inside the A-H equally confused the situation. I agree with your "lit the fuse" H-G, but there's a long trail back that leads to imperial rivalries, and specifically to the British Empire's (and French Empire) absolute refusal to let Germany into "the club" - they got East Africa which was nothing and a sort of insult to the Germans. Your ref. to German behavior in W.W. I has little to do with causation of the war (yes, it was horrible).I don't absolve the Germans at all, but laying most of the blame at their door, which most do (too much thinking of WW II), is simplistic. Max Hastings thinks if Germany had waited they would have taken over Europe economically by the 1930s.

Imperialism, miltarism, secret treaties, arms race... all these play into the deep causes of W.W. I see http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/w... Somehow, it was OK for UK to colonize India etc., and France to take over other places, but when Germany, after Bismarck was removed by dumbo Kaiser Wilhelm II (1890) and sought his own global colonies...big boys UK and France would not allow it. When Germany stupidly began to build dreadnoughts etc. and have a large navy, the UK was heavily threatened and only then began to work closely with France, a traditional enemy.H-G, add German WW I use of chlorine and mustard gas to the list of their misdeeds, but this has nothing to do with causation. Do you need to demonize one side to lay blame on them?

Gosh, something is wrong when I agree with Nick on something. Getting into WW1 at the last minute was the right thing to do. I also think we waited until we had to before we engaged in WW2 as well.

But in just about every conflict since, we are the first in and last to leave. The world hates us and our global empire may lead to our eventual downfall. We may join the ranks of the others that have tried to control the world and eventually disappeared off the face of the map.

Dan, the theory that France and England were somehow at fault for Germany's decision to back the insane AH ultimatum because of their unwillingness to let Germany join "the big boys club" is hackneyed and does not stand up to the facts.

By the time that the war worshiping Prussians created a unified Germany by force, all of the good colonies were taken. The French and English supported the German colonial effort by letting them have virtually all of the available land on earth that was left to colonize. The also newly minted Italian Kingdom got even worse colonies and had to invade Libya and Ethiopia just to keep up. WWI was a war of choice started by the fading AH empire and the war obsessed, Prussian dominated German Empire. Without German backing and encouragement AH would never had invaded Serbia and there would have been no WWI. Germany is guilty as charged.

agree Botany, and you must be getting soft. We only entered WW II when Japan attacked at Pearl Harbor Dec 7, 1941, over two full years after Germany attacked Poland in 1939. 'All Empires Fall' is such a truism, but it is valid.